Police to get expert training in homicide investigations

Police to get expert training in homicide investigations

and German Liaison officer Rudiger Stransky (in tie) pose for a photo with some of the partcipants

In the struggle to reduce the large numbers of unsolved homicide cases in Uganda every year by the police, Germany government has offered to train Uganda Police officers on homicide investigations.

The Germany Liaison officer Rudiger Stransky said his government has started offering these courses in 2007 in Ethiopia, moved it to Kenya and now is set to start in Uganda. He said the beneficiary countries had witnessed great improvements in terms of resolving the cases.

Homicide is a broad, generic concept that is used to describe killing of someone by another person, no matter the intent of the killer. For example, the act of harming an individual in defence of oneself or a family member leading to his death is classified as homicide and not murder. On the other hand, Murder is the killing of an individual with a premeditated intension.

For example, when a criminal is charged with murder, he is not only convicted with the charge of a simple homicide but also the intent of killing an individual.

The training appears to be a timely intervention after it was revealed this week that 4056 homicide cases had been recorded by the Uganda Police between 2011 and 2015, but only 2percent of them were resolved.

The Police Deputy Director for Human Resource Department and senior detective Felix Ndyomugenyi (pictured) decried what he referred to as worrying number of homicide cases in Uganda, compared to Police’s ability to cope with the numbers.

“Homicide is not a new crime in our society but the magnitude at which it is moving is too big which is worrying, and as we focus on the mass homicide crimes, there are many isolated cases of homicide cases that go unnoticed that is why we see that in 2011 only 17 homicide cases were resolved from the 1011 homicide cases registered.”

Ndyomugenyi said the police was mostly preoccupied with bigger and prominent cases such as the murder of muslim clerics, the assassination of Joan Kagezi, the former public prosecutor.

According to Ndyomugenyi, over 2000 officers will be trained during the second phase. The training is being offered free of charge by the Germany government.